Transformers Academy
Transformers Academy is an animated television series based on British-American-Canadian cartoons developed by Nick Andersen and produced by Cartoonverse Television in association with Cosgrove Hall Films and RTÉ Television. It was previously owned by Entertainment Rights from 2001 to 2009 (when its owner was asborded into Classic Media), ending the existence of the program in 2010. It was originally aired on RTÉ Television in Ireland on August 15, 2003, and then on Cartoon Network on October 8, 2004, in the United States. There were 13 half-hour episodes from 2003 to 2007, as part of the ownership of Entertainment Rights of the United States/United Kingdom. The series was canceled on August 20, 2007. Half-hour episodes were also released as two DVD releases in UK by Right Entertainment, from June 5, 2005 and June 8, 2007. The series finale officially aired in 2007. History Entertainment Rights (1989-2009) , ending the show's existence.]] In 1989, "Sleepy Kids" was founded by Martin and Vivien Schrager-Powell. It was created in order to produce Midnight Patrol: Adventures in the Dream Zone (Potsworth and Co. in the UK) a children's animated series. Schrager-Powell's business partner was Hanna-Barbera. Within months of the founding, Sleepy Kids became a public company. It produced Dr. Zitbag's Transylvania Pet Shop and Budgie the Little Helicopter. Between 1998 and 1999, Sleepy Kids expanded. In December 1998, the company merged with The Richard Digance Card Company, Clipper Films and Ridgeway Films. In 1999, the company acquired Siriol Productions. Also in 1999, Sleepy Kids purchased Boom Boom (owner of Basil Brush), Carrington Productions International (owner of the Ventureworld Films and Dr. Zitbag's Transylvania Pet Shop. Following these acquisitions, Sleepy Kids was renamed "SKD Media". In 2000, SKD Media was renamed "Entertainment Rights". Entertainment Rights purchased the rights to programs from companies such as Link Entertainment (distributors for Woodland Animations) Varga London, Hibbert Ralph Entertainment, and Maddocks Animation and Little Entertainment Company. In 2004, Entertainment rights acquired Tell-Tale Productions and rights to most of the Filmation library from Sonar Entertainment (Hallmark). At the end of 2004, Entertainment Rights employed 95 people. In the 2005 financial year, Entertainment Rights' revenue was £12.4 million. The company bid for Chorion but the offer was rejected. In 2005, Siriol Productions came under new management. The company was renamed "Calon". Most of the rights to completed productions were kept by Entertainment Rights. On 11 January 2007, Entertainment Rights acquired Classic Media for (£106.9 million). Before completion, both companies announced distribution and production agreements with Genius Products. In December 2008, the company appointed of Deborah Dugan, former president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). There had been financial instability within the company. By January 2009, the company had dismissed one third of its employees. The company's market value decreased from £267 million in March 2007 to £5.5 million. By February 2009, six companies had requested to purchase Entertainment Rights. Also in February 2009, Entertainment Rights was fined £245,000 by the Financial Services Authority for failing to inform shareholders of "a potential $14 million earnings hit in a timely manner". On 1 April 2009, Entertainment Rights went into voluntary administration. On the same day, Boomerang Media announced it had acquired all of Entertainment Rights subsidiaries including Entertainment Rights itself, Big Idea and Classic Media. On May 11, 2009, Boomerang Media announced that the former U.K. and U.S. subsidiaries of Entertainment Rights would operate as a unified business under the name "Classic Media", while Big Idea would operate under its own name. Boomerang Media was created by former owners of Classic Media until it was sold to Entertainment Rights in 2006. In 2012, Classic Media was acquired by DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks Animation was then acquired by NBCUniversal in 2016, thus Universal Pictures gaining the rights to most of Entertainment Rights' catalogue of works. Cosgrove Hall Films (1976-2009) Stop Frame Productions Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall first met while both were students at Manchester College of Art and Design, which is now part of Manchester Metropolitan University. They later became co-workers at Granada Television, where they produced television graphics. Hall left his job in 1969 and founded his own production company, Stop Frame Productions. Cosgrove joined the company shortly after its establishment. Their first projects, for Stop Frame, included public service films and television commercials for such companies as the TVTimes. From 1971 to 1972, the company released the animated series, The Magic Ball, which they created in a renovated shed located in the yard of Cosgrove's father-in-law. Hall directed two animated productions for Stop Frame, Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, which was released in 1972, and the television series, Noddy, which aired in 1975. The company also produced opening credits and graphics for children's series such as Rainbow in 1972. Cosgrove Hall Films , Cosgrove Hall Films co-produced Transformers Academy, in association with the series's owner Entertainment Rights and Ubisoft.]] Stop Frame Productions ceased production, and was closed, in 1975. However, Cosgrove and Hall were able to find new work in animation, specifically due to their earlier work on the 1972 series Rainbow. The producer of Rainbow, Thames Television, an ITV company, created a new, subsidiary, animation studio called Cosgrove Hall Films. Thames hired and commissioned Cosgrove and Hall as lead animators to create new animated programs, for this new studio, based on their earlier work with Rainbow. Thames Television also hired John Hambley as Cosgrove Hall Films' first executive producer. In 1993 the ownership of Cosgrove Hall was transferred to Anglia Television, following the loss of Thames' ITV licence and, following a series of takeovers and mergers, ownership finally belonged to ITV plc. Its first series was Chorlton and the Wheelies, the lead role being named after the suburb of Manchester where the company was based (the other characters were placed on wheels as this made the stop-frame animation easier). Danger Mouse was one of the studio's earliest international successes. The studio made 161 episodes between 1981 and 1992. In each one, Danger Mouse, the world's greatest secret agent, and his well-meaning but useless sidekick Penfold, outwit the evil Baron Silas Greenback and assorted baddies. In 1983 the studio made a 75-minute film, The Wind in the Willows, based on Kenneth Grahame's classic story of the same name. It won a BAFTA award and an international Emmy award. Subsequently, the studio made a 52-episode TV series based on the characters between 1984 and 1990. All the music and songs for the feature and series were written by Keith Hopwood, late of Herman's Hermits and Malcolm Rowe. The Stone Roses guitarist John Squire worked on this series. Count Duckula was a spoof on the Dracula legend; its title character is the world's only vegetarian vampire. He aspires to be rich and famous. Originally he was a villain/henchman recurring in the Danger Mouse series, but got a spin-off series in 1988 that rapidly became one of Cosgrove Hall's most successful programmes. Both shows also aired on Nickelodeon in the United States during the late 1980s, and were popular in the ratings for the channel. In 1989 the studio produced a full-length feature of Roald Dahl's "The BFG" music and songs by Keith Hopwood & Malcolm Rowe. Truckers, the first book in The Bromeliad, was the studio's first collaboration with the best-selling author Terry Pratchett. The 1991 series follows the efforts of a group of gnomes, whose spaceship crash-landed on Earth 15,000 years ago, to return home. In 1997 Cosgrove Hall films produced two series for Channel 4 based on Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, two novels from Pratchett's Discworld series. In 1999, they produced IDs for Cartoon Network when the channel's European outlet could use some new IDs. One of the studio's specialities was producing programmes for young children. They made 39 episodes of Noddy's Toyland Adventures (1992–1999) and 52 of Bill and Ben (2001) for the BBC. Like Bill and Ben, the 52 episodes of Andy Pandy (2002) were based on the classic characters from the 1950s. Inspiral Carpets drummer Craig Gill was involved in the early stages of this project, although the music and songs were written by Keith Hopwood and Phil Bush. In Australia all of them were aired on ABC, although Danger Mouse, Count Duckula and Alias the Jester later aired on Network Ten. The studio also made Ghosts of Albion (2003), for the BBC's first fully animated webcast. This gothic tale is set in a 19th-century London swarming with demons. Website visitors could learn about the production and help to develop the story. The studio also produced Scream of the Shalka, a Doctor Who animated story for the BBC website. In 2006 they animated the missing first and fourth episodes of the Doctor Who serial The Invasion for a DVD release. Other animations made by the studio include Foxbusters, Victor and Hugo, Avenger Penguins, Jamie and the Magic Torch, Fetch the Vet and Albie. They have also produced the new episodes of Postman Pat. They had also attempted to make their first CGI-animated series "Theodore", but this failed, due to ITV's absorbing of the company. The pop singer and musician Bernard Sumner worked for Cosgrove Hall from 1976 to 1979 as a tracer. In 2008, shortly after Granada Television became the only surviving franchisee of Independent Television in England and Wales, all except four staff were made redundant, by ITV, and moved 'in house' to the Granada Television Studios in Manchester. This ended 30 years of the studio in Chorlton. The reasons are complex but it was mostly as a result of the company's owner, ITV Granada's, lack of interest in investing in Cosgrove Hall. A financial review decided that the company was no longer viable. UK animation production industry is, in general, struggling because of increasingly tough competition from state-subsidised production in countries such as Canada, France and the Far East where the industry is growing and very buoyant. The company was again put under review by ITV plc in October 2009, being absorbed, and ceasing to exist, a few months later. The land occupied by Cosgrove Hall's studios, in Albany Road, Chorlton, adjacent to the town's telephone exchange, which had stood empty for two years, was finally sold in summer 2010 to a housing development company. The intention was to demolish the historic studios and build retirement flats. During 2012 the studios were finally demolished as part of the above development. Urban explorers who visited the site during the demolition found and photographed some models and backgrounds used in previous productions. Coincidentally, during April of that year it was announced that during the previous summer, prior to the death of Mark Hall, he and Brian Cosgrove had pitched the idea of resurrecting the brand to possible investors. Brian Cosgrove is now executive producer at CHF Entertainment, as was Hall until his untimely death. On 18 November 2011, it was announced that Mark Hall had died of cancer at the age of 75. Now, CHF Entertainment are actively working on a number of television series, including 'Pip', which is aimed at pre-school children and 'Herogliffix' which is for older children. Ubisoft (1986-present) and Entertainment Rights.]] On 12 March 1986, Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel and Yves Guillemot, five brothers of the Guillemot family, founded Ubi Soft in Carentoir, a small village located in the Morbihan department of France's Brittany region. Yves Guillemot soon made deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line and MicroProse to distribute their games in France. By the end of the decade, Ubi Soft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. They entered the video game distribution and wholesale markets, and by 1993 they had become the largest distributor of video games in France. In the early 1990s, Ubi Soft initiated its in-house game development program, which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, which later became their primary operating offices. Ubi Soft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued its expansion around the globe, opening locations in Annecy (1996), Shanghai (1996), Montreal (1997), and Milan (1998). In March 2001, Gores Technology Group sold The Learning Company's entertainment division (which includes games originally published by Brøderbund, Mattel, Mindscape and Strategic Simulations) to them. The sale included the rights to intellectual properties such as the Myst and Prince of Persia series. In July 2006, Ubisoft bought the Driver franchise from Atari for a sum of €19 million in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. In July 2008, Ubisoft made the acquisition of Hybride Technologies, a Piedmont-based studio renowned for its expertise in the creation of visual effects for cinema, television and advertising. In November 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment from Activision. In January 2013, Ubisoft acquired South Park: The Stick of Truth from THQ for $3.265 million. On 9 September 2003, Ubi Soft announced that they would change their name to simply Ubisoft, and introduced a new logo known as "the swirl". In December 2004, rival gaming corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm, an action Ubisoft referred to as "hostile" on EA's part. Ubisoft announced plans in 2013 to invest $373 million into its Quebec operations over seven years, a move that is expected to generate 500 additional jobs in the province. The publisher is investing in the expansion of its motion capture technologies, and consolidating its online games operations and infrastructure in Montreal. By 2020, the company will employ more than 3,500 staff at its studios in Montreal and Quebec City. In March 2015, the company set up a Consumer Relationship Centre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The centre is intended to integrate consumer support teams and community managers. Consumer Support and Community Management teams at the CRC are operational seven days a week. In May 2017, Ubisoft announced that they had changed their logo to a simplistic, minimalistic version of the former representation. Attempted takeover by Vivendi Since around 2015, the French mass media company Vivendi has been seeking to expand its media properties through acquisitions and other business deals. In addition to advertising firm Havas, Ubisoft was one of the first target properties identified by Vivendi, which as of September 2017 has an estimated valuation of $6.4 billion. Vivendi, in two separate actions during October 2015, bought shares in Ubisoft stock, giving them a 10.4% stake in Ubisoft, an action that Yves Guillemot considered "unwelcome" and feared a hostile takeover. In a presentation during the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, Yves Guillemot stressed the importance that Ubisoft remain an independent company to maintain its creative freedom. Vice-President of Live Operations, Anne Blondel-Jouin, expressed similar sentiment in an interview with PCGamesN, stating that Ubisoft's success was (partly) due to "...being super independent, being very autonomous." Vivendi also acquired stake in mobile game publisher Gameloft, also owned by the Guillemots, at the same time it started acquiring Ubisoft shares. In the following February, Vivendi acquired €500 million worth of shares in Gameloft, gaining more than 30% of the shares and requiring the company under French law to make a public tender offer; this action enabled Vivendi to complete the hostile takeover of Gameloft by June 2016. Following Vivendi's actions with Gameloft in February 2016, the Guillemots asked for more Canadian investors in the following February to fend off a similar Vivendi takeover; by this point, Vivendi had increased their share in Ubisoft to 15%, exceeding the estimated 9% that the Guillemots owned. By mid-June 2016, Vivendi had increased its shares to 20.1%, but denied it was in the process of a takeover. By the time of Ubisoft's annual board meeting in September 2016, Vivendi has gained 23% of the shares, while Guillemots were able to increase their voting share to 20%. A request was made at the board meeting to place Vivendi representatives on Ubisoft's board, given the size of their share holdings. The Guillemots argued strongly against this, reiterating that Vivendi should be seen as a competitor, and succeeded in swaying other voting members to deny any board seats to Vivendi. Vivendi continued to buy shares in Ubisoft, approaching the 30% mark that could trigger a hostile takeover; as of December 2016, Vivendi held a 27.15% stake in Ubisoft. Reuters reported in April 2017 that Vivendi's takeover of Ubisoft would likely happen that year, and Bloomberg Businessweek observed that some of Vivendi's shares would reach the two-year holding mark, which would grant them double voting power, and would likely meet or exceed the 30% threshold. The Guillemot family has since raised their stake in Ubisoft; as of June 2017, the family now held 13.6 percent of Ubisoft's share capital, and 20.02 percent of the company's voting rights. In October 2017, Ubisoft announced it reached a deal with an "investment services provider" to help them purchase back 4 million shares by the end of the year, preventing others, specifically Vivendi, from buying these. In the week just before Vivendi would gain double-voting rights for previously purchased shares, which would have likely pushed their ownership over 30%, the company, in quarterly results published in November 2017, that it has no plans to acquire Ubisoft for the next six months, nor will seek board positions due to the shares they hold during that time, and that it "will ensure that its interest in Ubisoft will not exceed the threshold of 30% through the doubling of its voting rights." Vivendi remained committed to expanding in the video game sector, identifying that their investment in Ubisoft could represent a capital gain of over 1 billion euros. On 20 March 2018, Ubisoft and Vivendi struck a deal ending any potential takeover, with Vivendi selling all of its shares, over 30 million, to other parties and agreeing to not buy any Ubisoft shares for five years. Some of those shares were sold to Tencent, which after the transaction held about 5.6 million shares of Ubisoft; the same day, Ubisoft announced a partnership with Tencent to help bring their games into the Chinese market. Episodes Broadcast History Ireland * RTÉ Television (2003-2007) * TG4 (2005-2008) * The Den (2006-2009) United States * Cartoon Network (2003-2007) * Qubo (2007-2009) * Boomerang (2005-2009) United Kingdom * ITV (2005-2007) * Cartoon Network (2006-2009) * Cartoon Network Too! (2006-2009) Canada * YTV (2005-2007) * Treehouse TV (2007-2009) Iran * IRIB Pooya (2013-2016) Japan * TV Tokyo (2004-2006) * Cartoon Network (2006-2009) Italy * Frisbee (2010) * K2 (2004-2007) * Cartoon Network (2005-2009) * Hiro (2005-2008) Micronesia * Disney Channel (2006-2008) * Fun TV (2006-2009) * Playhouse Disney (2007-2009) Germany * Super RTL (2006-2009) * Cartoon Network (2006-2008) * Boomerang (2008-2009) Hungary * Minimax (2004-2007) * Cartoon Network (2005-2009) Poland * ZigZap (2004-2008) * Cartoon Network (2006-2009) * Boomerang (2005-2009) Latin America * Cartoon Network (2004-2007) * Boomerang (2007-2009) Mexico * Canal 5 (2005-2008) * Azteca 7 (2008-2009) Philippines * Cartoon Network (2005-2009) * TV5 (2007-2009) Malaysia * Cartoon Network (2004-2008) * Boomerang (2008-2009) * TV9 (2007-2009) India * Cartoon Network (2003-2009) References See also * Entertainment Rights * Cosgrove Hall Films * Ubisoft * Cartoonverse Television Category:American children's animated adventure television series Category:American children's animated fantasy television series Category:ITV children's television programmes Category:APRA Award winners Category:American computer-animated television series Category:British computer-animated television series Category:Canadian computer-animated television series Category:Canadian animated television programs featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:American animated television programs featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:Qubo shows Category:RTÉ Television shows Category:English-language television programs Category:2003 American television series debuts Category:2007 American television series endings Category:2000s American animated television series Category:Cartoon Network original programs Category:2003 Canadian television series debuts Category:2007 Canadian television series endings Category:2000s Canadian animated television series Category:British adventure television series Category:British children's animated television programmes Category:British fantasy television series Category:2003 British television programme debuts Category:2007 British television programme endings Category:2000s British animated television series Category:Canadian children's animated adventure television series Category:Canadian children's animated fantasy television series